Bolivia - Results

There was a quinoa boom and sharp increase in price in 2013. Famers reduced their land-use cycle from two years farming and five years fallowing to farming the same field for four or five years and only fallowing it for two or three. SID helps the farmers make land-use plans and return to their traditional farming-fallowing cycle, while at the same time increasing the productivity of land under cultivation. In addition, we help them sow a cover crop of native grasses in order to protect their land from wind erosion while it is being fallowed. Erosion by rainwater is also a problem, especially in compacted soils. Thus, we help farmers to dam gullies and dig water infiltration ditches so that rainwater sinks into the soil rather than washing away the topsoil.

There are 1,143 family-farm members of the three groups of quinoa associations, with an average of 7 hectares of farmland under quinoa and potato production, and together they have put approximately 8,000 hectares of farmland under effective erosion-control and conservation practices.

The quinoa year is from May to the end of the quinoa harvest in April. For example, the 2012/13 year is from May2012 to April 2013. The 298 farmers in the first group of 10 associations increased their income from an average of $508 to $1,985 and they graduated from the program in April 2015. The 564 quinoa families that comprise the second group of 16 associations increased their income from an average of $648 to $1,272 in the harvest that ended in April 2016, and they will graduate from the project in April 2017. The third group of 10 associations and 281 members increased their average income from $712 to $983 in their first year in the project.

The ratio of increases in farmer income to project costs is 8.59 after four years.

Producers' Associations: 2008 to 2012

The baseline income of the 4,313 members of the 81 producers' associations was $5.4 million. Their planned increases in income, taken directly from their business plans, were $10.6 million. The actual increases were $9.0 million. The cost of the project was approximately $1 million. The actual increases in income were more than $4 million; and the cost-benefit ratio of increases in income to project cost was more than 4 to 1.